Navir's spoon clinked against the bowl for the third time without him noticing.
"You're going to wear a hole in it," Ravash said, eyeing him from across the table.
Navir blinked. "What?"
"That. You just did it again."
Before Navir could respond, Ardavan leaned sideways on his chair, balancing it on two legs like a child daring gravity to blink first. He grinned, wide and unbothered. "If the spoon falls through the bowl, does it land yesterday or tomorrow?"
Ravash stared, curiosity and suspicion echoing in his eyes.
Ardavan shrugged. "Just asking."
Navir pressed his fingers to his temple. Heat pulsed behind his eyes, slow and thick, like breath trapped under water. The room felt heavier, air dragging across his skin.
"You okay?" Ravash asked, turning to Ardavan. "You've been off lately."
"I'm great," Ardavan said too quickly. He tapped the table three times, then laughed at nothing. "Never clearer."
Navir pushed back from the table. The floor tilted. Sound dulled. Ravash's voice stretched, warped.
"Navir?"
His thoughts dulled all at once, as if someone had smothered them with wool.
Navir blinked, and the world was gone.
He stood in a vast wasteland where the ground lay split and lifeless beneath his boots. Above him, heavy gray clouds churned endlessly, stacked low and dark, pressing down as if the sky itself meant to crush him. No wind. No sound. Just space stretching too far in every direction.
He dug his fingers into his arm and pinched hard, jaw tight, waiting for pain to snap him free. Nothing. Not even a sting. His pulse thudded louder, mocking him.
"Hello?" he called.
The word scattered into the distance, returned thin and warped, echoes peeling back without comfort or reply.
He walked. Or drifted. Time loosened its grip. The land never changed, only cracked soil, endless gray, and that suffocating ceiling of clouds. His breath grew shallow, each step heavier than the last.
Then something moved.
A dark silhouette hurried through the distance, long strides eating the ground, too fast to track. Navir turned sharply, and spotted another. Then another. Shapes crossing the wasteland with wide, urgent steps, heads down, faces lost to shadow. They never looked at him. Never slowed.
His chest seized.
The world lurched.
Navir gasped, air tearing back into his lungs as reality slammed into place.
He clawed at the air, and gasped, choking, snapping upright.
The table. The bowl. Ardavan mid-laugh.
Navir's footsteps crunched the dirt road, hollow and slow. Shopkeepers glanced at him with tight-lipped caution, pulling curtains halfway across their windows. Children darted behind mothers, whispers trailing like shadows.
"Don't go near him," one voice hissed as he passed. Navir froze, throat tight.
Ravash lingered a short distance away, watching without stepping in. The familiar smirk was gone, his face set in a still, guarded calm as his eyes followed Navir's every move. After a moment, he lowered his gaze and gave a slow, almost imperceptible shake of his head, an expression heavy with quiet sorrow. Then he turned his back, walking off without a single word, leaving the space between them unbridged.
But even friends seemed to step aside, casual gestures of avoidance stinging sharper than insults. Nimi, once warm and teasing, now met his gaze with icy detachment.
Rumors thrummed around him like a distant drumbeat: cursed, haunted, marked. His pulse quickened, dread coiling in his chest.
A neighbor leaned across a doorway, whispering to another. Navir caught it: "He carries the Burden Mark. Stay away."
Navir's eyes narrowed, breath hitching. He knew the truth, he bore no mark. Yet a shiver ran down his spine as isolation settled in like a shadow refusing to lift.
Navir found Arisha in the kitchen, hands deep in flour, shoulders rigid as stone.
"Mother," he said, voice rough. "I don't feel good. My head, it burns. I don't… I keep seeing things."
She didn't look up. "You're tired Navir."
"No. It's not that," he insisted, stepping closer.
Arisha slammed the bowl onto the table, the sharp crack snapping through the room. "Enough." She faced him, red eyes hard, jaw clenched so tight it trembled. "Do you think you're the only one drowning?" Her voice rose despite her effort to keep it steady. "We buried a boy, your friend, and now you want to torment yourself with stories?"
The words came fast, brittle, but her eyes betrayed her. Tears gathered, blurring their fierce shine, one threatening to spill as her breath hitched.
"I'm not making it up," Navir said, his voice breaking as heat burned behind his eyes.
She brought the rolling pin down on the counter in sharp, measured strikes, five hard thuds that echoed through the room.
"You're", thud, "acting", thud, "like", thud, "a helpless", thud, "child." Her voice trembled, anger stretched thin over fear.
"Letting stress turn you soft? I won't hear this nonsense." She turned away as she spoke, shoulders tight, breath uneven, as if facing him might crack whatever resolve she had left. "I won't indulge this, not now, not when everything is already falling apart."
Something cracked in him.
Navir stepped back, chest heaving. "Fine, then don't."
Navir spun on his heel and stormed out of the kitchen, his footsteps pounding through the living room before he slammed the front door behind him.
The moment
it closed, the world tilted.
Pressure slammed into his skull.
Gray clouds rolled back in.